I just thought I'd throw this in here. My drive was bricked, I phoned the support number and was speaking to a live person within 5 minutes, and paid $25 to have a drive cross-shipped air mail, which arrived 2 days after the phone call. Still the old firmware, and I'm still waiting to hear what is going to happen with a new firmware, but I have a brand new drive running and it only cost $25. I don't know about this 8-10 week RMA...

I did the same thing. It only cost me $25 to get a brand new drive (bought the day before) replaced with a brand new drive. Now thats a bargain!

I have no issues with the support phone call or the RMA process. However, this is one issue that Intel is clearly responsible for. They should have bitten the bullet and covered the $25 themselves. There are alot of people sitting on the fence waiting for some direction from the giant.

I just thought I'd throw this in here. My drive was bricked, I phoned the support number and was speaking to a live person within 5 minutes, and paid $25 to have a drive cross-shipped air mail, which arrived 2 days after the phone call. Still the old firmware, and I'm still waiting to hear what is going to happen with a new firmware, but I have a brand new drive running and it only cost $25. I don't know about this 8-10 week RMA...

I did the same thing. It only cost me $25 to get a brand new drive (bought the day before) replaced with a brand new drive. Now thats a bargain!

I have no issues with the support phone call or the RMA process. However, this is one issue that Intel is clearly responsible for. They should have bitten the bullet and covered the $25 themselves. There are alot of people sitting on the fence waiting for some direction from the giant.

That's awesome if you are in the US, if you're not though you'll find you can't really do that. Not all the world has a supply of replacement spares ready to send out like this.

I think from April to August... not sure, but I think that was the reason the G2 drives weren't shipping for so long.

Also, I spoke with the Intel tech support rep about the firmware and the BIOS password issue. I used HDDerase 3.3 to blank my drive, but I unwittingly used the enhanced secure erase option, which apparently sets a password on the drive (thus bricking it). However, I could get it to work a little after that, and the support rep said that if the firmware could update, then the new firmware was supposed to fix this issue as well and all would be good. The firmware update worked, but the drive didn't, at least not for long. Maybe this 'fix' might be at the root of the problem, and not just enabling TRIM

I just thought I'd throw this in here. My drive was bricked, I phoned the support number and was speaking to a live person within 5 minutes, and paid $25 to have a drive cross-shipped air mail, which arrived 2 days after the phone call. Still the old firmware, and I'm still waiting to hear what is going to happen with a new firmware, but I have a brand new drive running and it only cost $25. I don't know about this 8-10 week RMA..

I did the same actually, I dialed the support number and spoke to some really friendly dude and can only repeat what I was told. Chance is he did not know himself. The difference to you is, I live in Germany.

I don't know what you mean by "cross shipping" (well, my english sucks as I'm no native speaker), but if you mean that you and Intel sent their packages simoultanously I can only envy you, since I don't have that option or atleast it was not offered to me. It is pretty common for an RMA-request to take about 8 weeks over here.

If cross-shipping is what I guess it is, than I will call them again tomorrow, that is f'ing awesome if they do that.

I appreciate the responses regarding calling phone support. But this is my point exactly, why do we have to pay $25 to get a new drive shipped when it was INTEL's fault for the bricked SSD's in the first place? Also why do they have email support when no one responds to them? I have a hard time believing that a company as big as Intel lacks the resources to have a responsive support center. Intel is one of the biggest technology companies, yet they have a hard time responding to emails?!?

Well, to be fair, I didn't HAVE to pay $25, I could have gotten them to email me a shipping label, print it out, ship my old drive, wait for them to get it and process it, and then they would have sent me a new one. I chose to pay the extra for cross-ship because it was quicker...

Actually the way their cross-ship works is, you pay the $25, then they send the new drive to you, and once you get the new drive, you put the old drive in the same box and ship it back with the included UPS label. The only catch is they hold some money on your credit card until they receive the old drive; I think it was only $180, and they took the hold off 5 days after I shipped it back to them.

P.S. The cross-shipping wasn't offered to me either, I had to ask about it, and then they transferred me to the cross-ship department.

"We have been contacted by users with SSD issues after using the firmware upgrade tool (version 1.3) in a Windows 7* 64bit environment. Intel has replicated the issue on 34nm SSDs (X25-M) and is working on a fix. If users have downloaded 02HA firmware and not upgraded, Intel recommends they don’t upgrade until further notice. Intel is pursuing the resolution of this as a high priority. No related issues have been reported by users who have successfully upgraded to 02HA firmware via the firmware upgrade tool (version 1.3)."

So this is a win 7/64 problem? If so why are the drives being replaced? If it is a compatibility problem with the new firmware why not issue a down grade firmware to fix the problem and save having to do an rma?

Also I am currently experiencing problems that developed after a successful firmware update. My OS freezes, I get the BSOD and the drives “disappear.” I have to clear the bios swap over the sata ports and the drive then reappears until it eventually (within 2 hours) crashes again.

I could switch to win 7/32 if that would be an interim solution, but is it? Someone please tell me. If I wipe the drives with hdderase and install win 7/32 will I be ok? I’’ I’m quite happy to do this as an interim measure but I don’t want to waste any more time on a futile exercise.

Hear hear! Seems our complaints in this thread helped a bit! But I dont understand the new statement:

"We have been contacted by users with SSD issues after using the firmware upgrade tool (version 1.3) in a Windows 7* 64bit environment.

.. AND...

No related issues have been reported by users who have successfully upgraded to 02HA firmware via the firmware upgrade tool (version 1.3)."

What are they saying here? The only way to upgrade your SSD firmware is via the "firmware upgrade tool" which runs via a boot cd. So the upgrade is never done in a "Windows 7* 64 bit environment" but in the environment that is on the boot cd. And then they say that "no related issues have been reported...". Do they mean that if your upgrade went ok, you are safe and the drive won't fail at a later stage? Or do they mean that you are safe if you don't use Windows 7 64bit?

@Stiggy: To me it sounds like the issue only occurs when Windows 7 x64 is already installed which certainly isn't the case reading through all the forum posts regarding the 1.4 firmware.

"No related issues have been reported by users who have successfully upgraded to 02HA firmware via the firmware upgrade tool (version 1.3)."

The above simple isn't true because many have stated successful flashes with Windows XP or Windows Vista already installed or having done fresh installs of Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7 only to result in bricked drives. Obviously most systems being affected have been users with Windows 7 x64 already installed but it's certainly not the only scenario resulting in error.

Ah, well speculation isn't worth my time. Just gotta be patient... then again, I have a working drive. Sure, I'd like the new firmware and all of the benefits that come with it, but these are great SSDs and I could wait until Christmas for the fix. To all of you with bricked drives: get any data off of them that you can, and RMA with cross-ship if possible. Is $25 worth the time and effort you're willing to spend to fix your drive and/or wait for a fix?

And those with a working 02HA drive? Can we safely upgrade to Windows 7 (x64) or not? I've got a half-working PC and have been waiting ages, first for the Win7 DVD to arive, and now I have it for this fw debacle.